2nd Blog: Systems and Automation

Robotics research in which use robots to teach a second language to children. Contact Tony Belpaeme 01752586212 tony.belpaeme@plymouth.ac.uk

For my second blog post, I will talk about Social Assistive Robotics (SAR) for education which I find interesting, and some of the ethical issues that will occur once they are introduced into classrooms.

An emerging field that is gaining popularity is SAR. In this branch of robotics, interactions occur between robots and humans through more social rather than physical means. These robots have entered the public environment serving as companions, toys, and personal assistants. One particular area that has seen a significant impact by introducing SAR is
in the classroom [4]. Theses are not the same robots that some may picture in a typical classroom where students are designing, building, and programming robots for competitions or fulfilling a classroom assignment. In particular, children (3-6) have interacted with robots in studies that have evaluated alternative methods for delivering lessons as compared to a traditional classroom taught by a single human teacher [5, 9, 11, 2].

In these studies, the general conclusion made is that children have improved in subjects with more significant learning gains when given the robotic treatment compared to baseline treatment, which is usually a standard classroom lecture. Because of these findings, introducing social educational robots in classrooms as an alternative teaching tool has been discussed. It does not come to a shock that ethical concerns arise when we are introducing such advanced robots to young children. Arguments about our technology today and how that it has been affecting our minds have been evaluated [3, 10, 12], but no extensive work on targeting social robots with children has been reported. There are also issues of privacy, social attachment, and liability that will be covered later.

In this post, my main argument will be that although social “classroom” robots will disrupt the traditional classroom environment, SAR still shows promise in student development and will require further attention. I will be going over why we should introduce robots in the classroom, the main concerns with intelligent robots today, and what precautions we should take to add SAR into more classes safely.

Background

SAR has gained a lot of attention as it is predicted that more robots will be integrated into our daily human lives in the near future. In the classroom, researchers have reported the benefits and improvements in child development [6]. SAR has taught social skills to children with autism [1], reinforce math lessons for children by acting as a tutor with behavior sensing programmed to encourage children to “think out load” and other techniques [9, 6], as a teacher complex areas such as second language [11]. Further research in child educational robots are explored to incorporate animating gestures and empathy to enhance engagement and create a more natural interaction. Other areas include using machine learning techniques to match the learning styles of the student
[5, 7, 8].

Why have Robots in the Classroom?

In this section, I will cover points as to why robots will be useful and needed in today’s classroom for children. The first reason is that parents and teachers have always wanted the best for their kids, and as the science and arts continue to progress, it also makes sense to update the curriculum to meet the demands of our society. Therefore, school districts are always in search of new and improved methods to teach children in more effective ways. Introducing these robots into the classrooms is an excellent opportunity to have school districts find them for themselves how effective this new tool on the students.

My second point is that modern classrooms today have teachers that face common occurrences in the classroom that hinder student learning. For example, a lack of engagement by students can result in distractions that the teacher must get control over. Whether that is the children find the lesson boring or not useful to them results in daydreaming or conversing with their peers can make delivering the lesson almost impossible. Here, robots are fascinating to children and will always encourage engagement, especially with robots today that are programmed with ”personalities” and social cues such as eyes gaze and deictic gesture. A sense of life in these robots is very attractive to children making them more likely to engage with them.

My final point is that these robots, as mentioned earlier, are programmable to include various machine learning techniques during their interaction with children. Every student is different when it comes to learning styles, and the teacher does not have the time to work with each type of student. SAR robots have the advantage of patience, and in one-on-one sessions, the robot’s teaching algorithm can help a student with their lesson, analyze their responses to questions, and formulate a unique lesson plan to address areas that the student is struggling. Also, the robots are equipped with sensors such as cameras and microphones to monitor a child’s response. This data serves as input for behavioral algorithms to elicit responses from the robot that could encourage critical thinking skills. Although these robots are using their sensors for educational purposes, there are still concerns that need to be addressed.

Concerns with “Classroom” Robots

Like most smart devices today, these Robots are equipped with cameras and microphones that capture their surrounding environment. Robots use their sensors for interacting with humans utilizing vision algorithms such as facial tracking and microphones to record and process speech. Naturally, privacy is the number one issue as the robots are interacting with children. The identity of students should not be recognized. Still, it is not always guaranteed. The robots only need to gather student data to generate appropriate responses during tutoring sessions or lectures, so the robot must not have student profiles accessible by those not involved with the school system.

Another concern is child attachment toward the robot. As mentioned earlier, children are more open to treating robots as life-like beings, and so bonds can be established. There have been concerns on how to address when the robot is out of service and can no longer be able to attend the classroom. In a way, this scenario is the same as a family member or friend that you could no longer see. This obviously can induce unwanted stress towards the child that is most likely affecting development. In addition, children that become attached to the robot can potentially reveal personal or private information that can be serious enough and require attention.

Control and accountability is also another concern. Because a robot is involved in the teaching process, how much should the robot be involved is another concern. In case there is a disruption in the case, should a robot have the authority to command students to stop talking and pay attention. Should the robot have a response behavior if a child begins to abuse the robot? If a robot’s action somehow caused distress to children, then what needs to happen. The scenarios mentioned here are only a subset of all the potential concerns that could occur in the classroom.

How to proceed with SAR in the Classroom

Before we bring SAR in the classroom, we have to keep in mind the purposes of the classroom. They usually are providing space for students to interact and engage in groups to learn from each other. The teacher provides a lesson and observes the students apply and reason out problems. Therefore, is robots do work in a classroom, what is the ideal interactions and job of the robot? Who gets to determine that are some questions that need to be settled by the school districts. To address the issues of privacy, remaining transparent as to what data is being collected and how it is processed and stored should be available. Overall, researchers still have a lot to figure out about the best practices and potential impacts that SAR could create.

SAR is more studied in the classroom for its positive outcomes in child development and learning. Because they have such an impact on improving student learning gains, the discussion as to integrate robot teacher assistants in the classroom has begun. Robots can be helpful in the classroom by providing students tailored tutoring sessions to meet their needs as well as maintaining engagements during lessons. As many can agree, that students gain the most if they are enjoying the material. By following guidelines and providing access to a robot’s algorithm, we can ensure that privacy and actions are addressed to maintain a safe and enjoyable environment for children.

Sources

[1] Momotaz Begum, Richard W Serna, and Holly A Yanco. Are robots ready to deliver autism interventions? a comprehensive review. International Journal of Social Robotics, 8(2):157– 181, 2016.
[2] Tony Belpaeme, James Kennedy, Aditi Ramachandran, Brian Scassellati, and Fumihide Tanaka. Social robots for education: A review. Science robotics, 3(21):eaat5954, 2018.
[3] Julian Cristia, Pablo Ibarrar´an, Santiago Cueto, Ana Santiago, and Eugenio Sever´ın. Technology and child development: Evidence from the one laptop per child program. 2012.
[4] Autumn Edwards, Chad Edwards, Patric R Spence, Christina Harris, and Andrew Gambino. Robots in the classroom: Differences in students’ perceptions of credibility and learning between “teacher as robot” and “robot as teacher”. Computers in Human Behavior, 65:627– 634, 2016.
[5] Goren Gordon, Samuel Spaulding, Jacqueline Kory Westlund, Jin Joo Lee, Luke Plummer, Marayna Martinez, Madhurima Das, and Cynthia Breazeal. Affective personalization of a social robot tutor for children’s second language skills. In Thirtieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2016.
[6] Takayuki Kanda, Takayuki Hirano, Daniel Eaton, and Hiroshi Ishiguro. Interactive robots as social partners and peer tutors for children: A field trial. Human–Computer Interaction, 19(1-2):61–84, 2004.
[7] Daniel Leyzberg, Samuel Spaulding, and Brian Scassellati. Personalizing robot tutors to individuals’ learning differences. In 2014 9th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), pages 423–430. IEEE, 2014.
[8] Donato Malerba, Annalisa Appice, Paolo Buono, Giovanna Castellano, Berardina De Carolis, Marco de Gemmis, Veronica Rossano, Lynn Margaret Rudd, et al. Advanced programming of intelligent social robots. Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society, 15(2), 2019.
[9] Aditi Ramachandran, Chien-Ming Huang, Edward Gartland, and Brian Scassellati. Thinking aloud with a tutoring robot to enhance learning. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pages 59–68, 2018.
[10] Amanda JC Sharkey. Should we welcome robot teachers? Ethics and Information Technology, 18(4):283–297, 2016.
[11] Paul Vogt, Rianne van den Berghe, Mirjam de Haas, Laura Hoffman, Junko Kanero, Ezgi Mamus, Jean-Marc Montanier, Cansu Oranc¸, Ora Oudgenoeg-Paz, Daniel He´andez Garc´ıa, et al. Second language tutoring using social robots: A large-scale study. In 2019 14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), pages 497–505. Ieee, 2019.
[12] Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard university press, 1980.

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1 Response to 2nd Blog: Systems and Automation

  1. Children are definitely very entranced by robots and I also think that the traditional classroom lecture style doesn’t work for everyone. These robots could really contribute to a more customized learning style and help keep students engaged. Since I am more hesitant to bring too much automation into our lives, I would probably want the robot to have specified functions that are run selectively by humans. For example, pressing a button on the robot would run one reading lesson and then stop after the lesson is completed. Anyways, it would be cool to see SAR in the classroom someday in a way that is safe and effective! -Tiffany

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